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Authors aim to relate, sympathise, or evoke any emotion from their readers. William Shakespeare achieves this goal through his use of Aristotle’s tragic hero who evokes sympathy for the character and forces the reader to evaluate certain traits in themselves. Tragic heroes possess a tragic flaw or downfall that leads to their death. Shakespeare uses the characteristics of Aristotle’s tragic hero to create a character that readers connect to and, despite their flaw, sympathize with. The fate of tragic heroes end in their death due to their own mistake or character flaw.…
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Aristotle was not only a scientific genius, but someone who carved the path for the way we depict plays and furthermore, how we write them. Aristotle made it a mission to read the plays of his era, while doing so he discovered many similarities among them, creating a tragedy. A tragedy is a form of drama that is composed of three basic parts: values, characters, and a conclusion. A value is what will determine the fate of the tragic character in the play, usually the value is represented by a supernatural power. While the character has to display certain characteristics like nobility either by birth or action, it is most noted for the characters downfall. The downfall occurs either by limitation of knowledge or by a tragic flaw within…
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Sophocles’s use of both plot and character within his classic tragedy “Oedipus the King” portray the religious and ethical views of the Classical period of Ancient Greece to such an extent that Knox goes so far as to say that “the audience which watched Oedipus in the theatre of Dionysus was watching itself.” Marlowe uses similar tools of character construction and plot in “Dr Faustus” to reflect the beliefs and moral attitudes held in Elizabethan England. The playwrights both use the conceptions of their protagonists to present contemporary beliefs; for example, the initial portrayal of the characters of Oedipus and Dr Faustus demonstrate ideological characteristics of a man within their respective contexts. On the other hand, with the…
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A tragic hero must make a wrong decision himself or has a character flaw (ambitious, greedy…) which leads them down a path of bad events because of that one choice. They must realise what they have done, so this makes the audience feel sorry for the hero. The audience also feels fear because they know that the choice they made had led the character down a path of evil from which they cannot turn back. This follows Aristotle’s theory of tragedy which should inspire pity and fear in the audience. It can’t be stopped until the events have worked themselves out and their natural order restored.…
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A tragic hero is defined as “a [great] man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake” (“Aristotle”, n.d.). Therefore, a tragic hero has some sort of tragedy that surrounds their life. A tragic hero also makes dramas more interesting and makes readers think. Dramas sometimes either exemplify or refute Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero. Oedipus by Sophocles exemplifies Aristotle’s definition in four different aspects. The first aspect involves both Oedipus’ ignorance and knowledge of his life situations, the second involves his hamartia, the third involves the actual plot itself, and the fourth involves the characterization of…
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The term, tragedy, by dictionary definition, can be defined as "A story with a sad or unhappy ending." (Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man). Although there is some truth to this, the true definition of tragedy goes much deeper. The notion of tragedy has been a part of English literature since the beginning of the Classical times. Tragedy is available in almost all literary forms, such as, novels, play wrights, film, etc. Shakespeare, for example, has written numerous world renowned tragedies since the turn of the seventeenth century. Four centuries later, with all the changes to the world of literature, tragedy continues to prevail, as a popular form of literature. Through comparing and contrasting William Shakespeare's, Hamlet, with Arthur Miller's, Death of a Salesman, it is clear that tragedy continues to have many of the same features as it did so long ago and it continues to appeal to audiences today. This is demonstrated through the tragic hero, the hero's tragic flaw, and the catharsis. With these three elements included, a more exact definition of tragedy is defined by Aristotle as, '...the imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude, in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play...through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions." (Aristotle, The Poetics).…
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Aristotle also outlined the characteristics of a good tragic hero. He must be "better than we are," a man who is superior to the average man in some way. In Oedipus 's case, he is superior not only because of social standing, but also because he is smart ¬ he is the only person who could solve the Sphinx 's riddle. At the same time, a tragic hero must evoke both pity and fear, and Aristotle claims that the best way to do this is if he is imperfect. A character with a mixture of good and evil is more compelling that a character who is merely good. And Oedipus is definitely not perfect; although a clever man, he is blind to the truth and refuses to believe Teiresias 's warnings. Although he is a good father, he unwittingly fathered children in incest. A tragic hero suffers because of his hamartia, a Greek word that is often translated as "tragic flaw" but really means "error in judgement." Often this flaw or error has to do with fate ¬ a character tempts fate, thinks he can change fate or doesn 't realize what fate has in store for him. In Oedipus the King, fate is an idea that surfaces again and again. Whether or not Oedipus has a "tragic flaw" is a matter that will be discussed later. The focus on fate reveals another aspect of a tragedy as outlined by Aristotle: dramatic irony. Good tragedies are filled with irony. The audience knows the outcome of the story already, but the hero does not, making his actions seem ignorant or inappropriate in the face of what is to come. Whenever a character attempts to change fate, this is ironic to an audience who knows that the tragic outcome of the story cannot be avoided.…
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The word “tragedy” evokes connotations of sadness, death, and irony. In literature, a tragedy is a plot in which the protagonist, also called a “tragic hero”, because of some inherent flaw in his/her character, dies. In the Poetics, Aristotle wrote that the purpose of Tragedy is to evoke a wonder born of pity and fear, the result of which is cathartic. As audience members we should sympathize with the protagonist, possibly recognizing in him/her our own human weaknesses. Because tragedy is built around an internal conflict of character, identification with the protagonist is crucial to success. For example, if we cannot understand Romeo’s naive, unsophisticated notion of love, what poignancy does his death have?…
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Doctor Faustus can be seen as either a romantic rebel or a damning folly. This excerpt, “His waxen wings did mount above his reach, And, melting, Heavens conspir’d his overthrow,” makes a reference to Icarus, which is a story told about a man named Icarus and his attempt to escape Crete using wings that his father had made out of feathers and wax. Icarus ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and his wax wings melted and caused him to fall into the sea where he drowned. The main theme of Icarus is the structure and consequence of personal over-ambition, which can relate very closely to Faustus’s tale, because it is Faustus’s over-ambition that damns him to an eternal suffering. This reference to a man who damned himself to a watery grave, leads me to believe that Doctor Faustus is meant to be perceived as a damning folly.…
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In the Fourth Century BC, a famous philosopher named Aristotle wrote about the qualities that a tragic hero must possess. Ever since that time, there have been many examples of tragic heroes in literature. None of those characters, however, display the tragic hero traits quite as well as Oedipus, the main character from the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Oedipus is, without a doubt, the absolute quintessence of a tragic hero. His example shines as clear as a sunny summer day.…
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It is part of daily living to experience tragedy; whether as an individual or to those around you; tragedy is a part of life. For some, tragedy happens for no apparent reason; one may be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For others, tragedy is the consequence of choices an individual makes. Tragedy is a common genre of writing. It involves a drastic change in fortune that is caused by a horrible mistake by a character. The character has the desire to change the present situation. A tragic hero, therefore, is the character who experiences a conflict and suffers catastrophically as a result of his choices and dies. One of the essential elements of a tragic hero is the tragic flaw – a set of inherent personality traits that inevitably dooms the character to destruction. Hamlet is an example of Shakespeare’s tragic hero. His tragic flaws are his indecisive nature, his inability to act, and his misogyny, mistrusting of women, all of which lead to his demise.…
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“Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy” (Jacques Barzun). A tragedy requires the tragic hero to have initiative towards a certain goal he or she pursues that results in their devastating defeat. Heroes never want to be involved with tragedies, but their miscalculations of an action influences them to be victims of tragedy. Based on Aristotle, every tragic play demonstrates a noble tragic hero having a fatal flaw that destructs their life but signifies a meaningful lesson. When examining the tragic hero in works of writing, Shakespeare’s plays portray characters whose flaws lead to their tragic end.…
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In broad terms, a “tragedy” is a work in which the main character, who is highly renowned and prosperous, is brought to ruin as a consequence of a predominating weakness or tragic flaw. According to Aristotle, the fall of the protagonist creates pity and fear in the audience, thus evoking catharsis. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman does not, in full, fit Aristotle’s definition of tragedy; therefore the play should not be classified as a tragedy.…
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Marlowe was an English playwright of the Elizabethan era. He was considered as the foremost dramatist of his time. In Harold Bloom’s Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, he stated that the original texts of the play was presented “without the punctuation of act division or scene enumeration (13).” This was the most common form of plays written in this period. Doctor Faustus is about a dissatisfied scholar that seeks intelligence and ultimate power through black magic. He learned black magic through the help of his magician friends, Valdes and Cornelius. Faustus summoned Mephistopheles, and then he sold his soul in exchange of the devil’s service and power. Themes of this play are pride and sin. We all know that pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins and that is the greatest sin committed by Faustus. Pride is the root of all evil which made him…
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Marlowe's Dr. Faustus tells the classic tale of a short-sighted person selling his or her soul to the Devil in order for immediate reward and benefit. The tragic part of this play is that Faustus realized extremely early on in the play that he is condemning himself to eternal punishment. Within his mind, he rationalizes his decision by…
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